Several engineer professors got on a plane to go to a conference. The pilot came back to tell them their students are the ones who designed and built the plane they are sitting on. All but one of the professors jumped up and started to run off the plane. When they noticed one professor stayed in his seat, they asked him why. He replied, “If my students built this plane, then I know for a fact that the plane will not even start.”

I am adjunct faculty at a private university in Nairobi and a few weeks ago I bumped into a former student of mine at the school. Let’s call him Juma for now and he has given permission for this story to be told. I got to know Juma a few years ago as he attended one of the corporate governance programs that I teach on and about a year later he was on another program for senior leadership that I was also teaching on. So last week I teased him that he was now due for a frequent flyer card from the university at the rate he was going. His response was totally illuminating.

Juma signs up for short executive education courses for two primary reasons: firstly, as someone who didn’t attend university, he is committed to widening his education as much as possible at any given opportunity. Secondly, Juma’s network now spans the African continent and North America due to the courses he has undertaken that have participants from these regions. He actively cultivates relationships with classmates, which relationships have opened doors and access to contacts that he needs in his multinational regional role.

“I didn’t go to university Carol,” he told me. “But that was not going to stop me from getting whatever job I wanted. You see, I take networking very seriously. If I see a CEO that I want to talk to even on a plane, I will upgrade my ticket to business class just so that I can get an opportunity to “bump” into him.” He said this without guile and disingenuity. “Juma, exactly what do you mean you’ve upgraded your ticket? How?” I asked, as curiosity got the better of me.

“I was at JKIA checking into a flight to London. I saw the CEO of X Bank on the business class line next to me and he was checking into the same flight. I asked the counter staff if there was a business class seat available and she said yes. So I whipped out my credit card and went to pay for an upgrade,” Juma replied matter-of-factly. “You see, I’ve always wanted to talk to the guy and when you are in business class, there is already a financial filter that business class has done for you. There is a natural tendency to be relaxed once up in the air. I even once paid for an upgrade to First Class on Emirates in Dubai when I saw a senior government official was on that flight as well. It has paid off very well,” he mused.

Whether you agree with Juma or not, he has a very effective strategy for getting ahead in his world. Sitting in business or first class for the length of a flight is enough to give you uninterrupted face time with someone who would never give you the time of day on the ground. And the price of that time for Juma is the thousand or so dollars it takes to get upgraded! What I do like about him is that when he is in class is fully attentive and 100% present. After fourteen years of working with executives in different training rooms across Africa, I can safely conclude that there is a marked difference between how an executive whose institution is paying for them and how an executive who is paying for themselves shows up in class.

The former often gets interrupted by calls, switches between paying attention in class and checking their email or Whatsapp regularly and sometimes jumps into Zoom meetings during classes. Such an executive is being trained on someone else’s dime and therefore has less skin in the game. However. the executive paying for themselves knows the value of every single minute of class time, as they are paying for it and therefore disconnects from the office completely to get the most bang out of a painfully paid buck.

If these executives were engineer trainees, which one do you want to build the plane for you?

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka